


A Trip to the Comic Book Store

by imkerfuffled



Series: Lucia Castillo, Helper of Superheroes [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Halloween, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5002447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little Lucia (who is thirteen, and <i>not</i> little anymore, thank you very much) loves superheroes, and she can't wait to get to the comic book store to find costumes for Black Widow and Hawkeye. There's only one problem... There <i>are</i> no costumes for Black Widow and Hawkeye, and the guy at the cash register refuses to take her seriously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 15 Days Before Halloween

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to stefaniegk; without your amazing comment on Lasting Impressions, little Lucia would never have gotten her follow up. I was trying to think of how to do that comment justice, when suddenly the first two paragraphs of this just popped into my head, and I rolled with it. This was so much fun to write, and I hope you like it :)
> 
> You don't _have_ to read Lasting Impressions to understand this, but I would recommend you do, because it's pretty cute, if I do say so myself. Her school bus gets attacked by a big scary monster, and Clint and Nat come to the rescue.

Adrian was a junior in high school now, and too old for superheroes, or so he claimed. He said Lucia would grow out of them too when she got to be his age, but she was only three years younger than him, and she couldn’t see that happening anytime soon. Three years might be a long time, but it wasn’t _that_ long.

Julie, her friend from school, said Adrian was dumb for thinking he could ever be too old for superheroes, and with any luck he’d get over it when he got to college. According to Julie, that was where people “stopped giving shits” about stupid things like public perception, and since both of Julie’s older sisters were already in college, she knew about things like that.

Little Lucia wasn’t so little anymore herself. As of a few months ago, she’d turned thirteen years old, which meant she was officially a teenager now, and she could do teenage things like date and stay up as late as she wanted (so long as she didn’t have a test the next day). It also meant she could ride the subway all on her own (but only after many, many hours of safety lessons and practice runs with her parents there, and only during daylight hours), and she could spend her money however she liked (with the obvious stipulation that she couldn’t spend it on anything illegal).

According to the unspoken rules of hero-ing, it _also_ meant she could join a superhero team now, but her parents expressly forbade her from ever doing that. 

So right now, she was doing the next best thing: heading to the comic book store alone for the very first time, with one fist clenched tight around the wad of allowance money in her pocket, and the other with her apartment keys jutting around her knuckles. She’d been studying Wolverine’s fighting techniques a bit, so she knew how to use them.

Julie was always amazed at how much independence Lucia’s parents let her and Adrian have, but to Lucia it seemed like plain common sense. Eventually, they’d _have_ to know these things when they were adults, so why not get used to some of them now, so they wouldn’t be crushed by the sudden weight of arbitrary responsibilities once they left home. Now she sounded like Julie. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if Julie had used that exact phrase at one point to convince her own parents to be less strict and overbearing than they tended to be.

Right now, she was glad she didn’t have Julie’s parents.

She pushed her way through the crowd off the subway car with a clear sense of purpose (the only way to get anywhere in New York City), and ignored all the fellow pedestrians turning to stare at the pigtailed little girl in the ill-fitting Black Widow jacket who said “’scuse me,” and “pardon me,” as she ducked under elbows and around purses. Speeding ahead of everyone else, she quickly made her way through the station and leapt up the stairs two at a time. As soon as she got aboveground and away from the highest concentration of people, she put on a new burst of speed (pausing for one impatient minute at the crosswalk) before finally reaching the comic book store. With a deep breath, and a big smile, Lucia burst through the door.

The comic book store wasn’t just a comic book store. In fact, comic books were only a small portion of what it sold. The store was split down the middle around the checkout counter, and nearest the display windows at the front stood shelves upon shelves of merchandise, from Bucky bears, to arc reactor nightlights, to plastic, blow up Mjolnirs. Behind that are were all the clothing and costumes, with detailed Spiderman suits sitting on racks alongside “Mutant and Proud” t-shirts and Hulk Halloween costumes with poofy, padded muscles. Everything to the right of the checkout counter was wall to wall comics, with big sections cut out for movies and regular books in the back. Big box sets of all the Captain America movies ever made ( _very_ big box sets) sat on one cardboard rack, and another held a series of paperback novels about a girl who discovered she was the illegitimate child of an obvious Iron Man rip-off. One of them stood in a special glass case and claimed to be autographed by Iron Man himself.

Lucia bounded up to the checkout counter, where she had to wait in line behind the only other customer in the store: a smelly, if very accurate Deadpool cosplayer, complete with suspiciously realistic swords. From what Lucia could tell, he had a complaint about a minor inaccuracy in last month’s Spiderman issue, while the cashier kept his head buried in his Superman annual for the entire thing, and grunted disapprovingly at all the appropriate times. Lucia got the strangest impression that this was a regular occurrence.

Finally, the Deadpool cosplayer left after buying what looked like the store’s entire supply of Spiderman comics, and Lucia stepped up and heaved her purple book bag, with all its rhinestone arrow decorations, onto the counter. The cashier glanced up at her, then went back to his comic book.

Lucia coughed politely.

“The Barbie store is around the corner, kid,” the cashier muttered, somehow without moving a single muscle of his face.

“Screw off,” Lucia told him, because that’s what Julie told her to say to anyone being jerks about gender stereotyping. Well, Julie substituted a much stronger word, but Lucia wasn’t allowed to use language like that. Technically, neither was Julie, but she didn’t give a shit. Lucia figured she was all ready for college.

This time, the cashier actually turned his neck to look up at her, but instead of backing off, like people usually did for Julie, he just laughed. Lucia decided she wouldn’t let anything get in the way of her good mood, and that included a-holes who believed in antiquated ideals.

“I was wondering if you still had any copies of the most recent Avengers issue?” she asked, giving him her sweetest, most innocent smile.

“Nope,” he said, adding a loud pop to the ‘p’ at the end. Lucia noticed he’d gone back to reading his comic and not moving.

“Shucks,” she smacked the counter with her fist. “How about Captain America?”

“Nope.”

“Iron Man? Spiderman?”

“Nuh-uh. Nada.”

“Superman?”

“No.”

Lucia narrowed her eyes at the comic in his hand. “I think you’re lying.”

“Not a chance.”

Grumbling to herself, Lucia picked up her book bag and stalked off to the comics section. Sure enough, she easily found everything she wanted within minutes. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine what Julie would say right now if she was here.

In the end, she decided to only buy the Avengers and Captain America comics, since she was trying to save up her allowance for a cool Halloween costume. Technically, she shouldn’t even buy the Captain America one, but she’d heard from Julie that Black Widow was supposed to be in this issue.

Speaking of costumes… Lucia wandered over to the clothing merchandise, too excited to wait before picking out what to get. She passed by two entire racks of various bat-family costumes before coming to the massive section dedicated solely to the Avengers. The store had, she discovered, no fewer than six individual padded Thor costumes, eight versions of Captain America (not including a very small show girl outfit from his time selling war bonds), seven different Iron Mans of varying quality, and five separate Hulk costumes (body paint sold separately). Of the New Avengers, she found one War Machine (obviously just an Iron Man with a color change), two Falcons, one skimpy red dress (possibly a swimsuit) that she thought might be the Scarlet Witch, two average-looking sets of running apparel for Quicksilver, and five Vision morph suits.

She spotted exactly one ridiculously inaccurate tank top made to look like Hawkeye’s costume, which might’ve fit Lucia as a very low-cut dress.

And for the Black Widow, despite being on both the old and new Avengers teams… a wig and a set of gloves.

“Hey!” Lucia shouted over the clothing racks, hoping the guy at the checkout counter was paying attention, “Where’s the Black Widow stuff?”

“It’s in the Avengers section,” he answered.

Lucia heard the flick of a page being turned and allowed herself one second of silent fuming before saying, “I’m _in_ the Avengers section!” She even jumped up and down and waved her arms in case he needed confirmation.

“No, it’s over… Oh.” Lucia smirked. “Yeah, whatever’s in there is all we’ve got.”

“Can you order more before Halloween?”

“Not unless you’ve got a valid ID or driver’s license.”

“Oh…” Lucia thought for a moment, “Does a middle school student ID count?”

“No.”

“Drat!” she hissed, kicking lightly at the base of a shelf.

 _I will not succumb to the negativity. I will not succumb to the negativity. I will not succumb to the negativity,_ she thought furiously to herself. _There’s got to be something in the merch section, at least._

There was nothing in the merch section, as she soon found out. Or rather, there was one row of tacky red hourglass necklaces and a bucket of plastic spiders, two thirds of which were patterned after Spiderman. Even half of the team merchandise left her out of the lineup, and Hawkeye was on even less.

_Think positive thoughts. Think positive thoughts._

On the other hand, a row of toy Hawkeye bows lined one wall, so at least he had _one_ cool thing in this store. Unlike Black Widow.

_Positive thoughts, not passive aggressive._

Lucia suddenly realized that, for the past minute, she had been standing in front of the spider bucket with her fists clenched at her sides, trying to turn into Cyclops and bore a hole in the shelf with her eyes.

“Is this all you have?” she asked, trying very hard not to scream.

For a few seconds, the cashier didn’t answer, and Lucia could almost hear his teeth grinding. “Yeah,” he grunted. He did a much worse job than Lucia at keeping his hostility out of his tone.

“Why isn’t there more for Hawkeye and Black Widow?” Lucia demanded.

“’Cause nobody gives a sh— no one cares about them,” he said.

“ _Excuse_ me?” Lucia screeched, forgetting in an instant about her vow to stay calm.

“Hawkeye’s useless, and Black Widow’s a slut. No one cares.”

Lucia snapped. Leaving no time nor inclination to think, she snatched a bow and quiver off the wall, leaped on top of the shelf in front of her, and—pausing only to yank it from its zip tie packaging—let fly a foam tipped arrow directly at the counter. The cashier glanced up just in time to see it zooming towards him, before it knocked the comic right out of his hand.

“Hey! What the fu—!” he shouted, jumping to his feet, “You just—what the—?”

“That’s two and a half years of archery lessons, jerkface!” Lucia yelled. Growling slightly, she tore another arrow out of the quiver and aimed it at him, “Tell me again Hawkeye’s useless! Do it! I dare you!”

“Holy sh—” The cashier instinctively threw his hands up in surrender, his eyes flying open even wider, “You’re crazy! You’re fu—you’re crazy!”

“Don’t call Black Widow dirty words. And don’t call Hawkeye useless,” Lucia growled.

“You’re paying for that bow.”

Lucia blinked.

“Dang it,” she whispered. The blood slowly quieted from a pounding in her ears to a dull rushing sound as she realized that, yes, she had ruined the packaging on the arrows, and no matter how justified her reasons for doing so, that meant she did have to pay for it, because that's how a superhero was supposed to behave. Her cheeks flushed.

Then she straightened her back, dropped off the shelf, and marched calmly to the counter, her chin held high. The cashier hadn’t moved an inch from his position pressed against the back wall. Lucia looked him in the eye and placed the bow, quiver, and arrow on the counter. She reached in her bag and pulled out her two comics before setting them next to the bow. Quickly calculating the cost of all three items in her head and realizing the total came out three dollars and sixteen cents more than what she had, she returned the Captain America issue to its shelf in silence and came back to the counter.

The cashier still hadn’t moved.

“Arrow please,” she said.

She waited for him to find the arrow she’d shot behind him, and poked around in a basket of buttons on the counter to find a new one for her bag.

The cashier put the missing arrow back in the quiver and rang up her items, staring at her the entire time with a look of startled fear and confusion on his face. Lucia pulled her wad of cash from her pocket and slid it across the counter to him. He counted the bills, divided them out into the cash register, and handed her the change and receipt.

The cash register’s _ding_ rang throughout the entire store each time he opened and closed it.

“Do you want a bag to put these in?” he asked, in his bewilderment, reverting back to his employee training.

“No thanks,” Lucia said, already pinning the new button to the front of her book bag. Without looking up at the cashier, she shoved her comic in her bag, slung the bow and quiver over her shoulder, and skipped out of the store.

The cashier gaped at her the entire time.

“Serves him right for being a sexist poophead,” Lucia muttered as she hit the sidewalk.

* * *

 

On the train home, more people than ever stared at the little, pigtailed girl with her black and red hourglass jacket, fraying bedazzled book bag, and the big toy bow crossing her chest. In one hand, she clenched the apartment keys on her lanyard, and in the other, her fingers flew over the screen of her phone, eagerly recounting the trip’s events to Julie.

* * *

 

“Mom, Dad, I’m home!” she shouted the moment she threw open the door. Adrian looked up from where he was sprawled on the living room floor doing his Algebra II homework.

“Don’t you already have a real bow?” he asked.

“Yes,” was the only reply she gave, as she headed straight to her room, flipped open her laptop, and began searching up cosplay sewing tutorials.

Because gosh darn it she was determined to get that Halloween costume no matter what it took. And she was going to head to that comic book store, and she was going to wear that costume, and she was going to buy every single comic featuring Hawkeye or Black Widow the store had in stock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this was loosely based on a true story. No, I didn't shoot a guy with a fake bow an arrow when I was thirteen. (In fact, I thought comic books were nothing more than pointless male power fantasies that glorified violence. Go figure.) But I _was_ wandering around the local Halloween store a few weeks back when I noticed that, despite having all the other movie Avengers in large abundance (as well as a metric crap ton of Wolverine), I could only find a wig for Nat (seriously? A wig? Because you definitely couldn't buy any old red wig in that store and use it for Nat, _nooooooo_ she needs a _special_ wig) and absolutely zilch for Clint. I added the gloves and tank top here because I figured that an exclusively superhero-themed store would probably have at least a bit more to choose from.


	2. Seven Days After Halloween

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucia returns with Julie and her completed, homemade costume.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second chapter that I said would go on This is Halloween, but I decided it fit better here instead. Obviously, this happens after that.

This time, _everybody’s_ eyes were on the young girl on the train, gripping one of the loops hanging from the ceiling and talking animatedly to her frizzy-haired friend in a maroon beanie. Somehow, she managed to accidentally hit everyone around her with her free hand as she talked and, more surprisingly, apologized for it every time without ever pausing. But that wasn’t what drew people’s attention. No, they stared at her sleek black outfit, reminiscent of Black Widow’s costume, but with obvious differences. All the blue stripes that ran down the original had been swapped with Hawkeye-purple, to match her zipper, holsters, gauntlets, and hair ties, and a purple bow and quiver of arrows was slung over the girl’s shoulder next to her purple book bag.

Lucia and her friend Julie got off at their stop, seemingly oblivious to the stares, and made their way purposely to the comic book store on the corner of the street. Just before they reached the store, Lucia checked her phone one more time to make absolutely certain they had the right time. She nodded once, turned to Julie, and together they threw open the door.

At once, Lucia was struck by a strong sense of déjà vu. The store, mostly empty save for a few scattered customers, looked exactly the same as before, down to the same cashier behind the counter and the same Deadpool cosplayer arguing at him. At the soft jingle of the door opening, they both turned to look at her and Julie. Recognition dawned on their faces at exactly the same time. The cashier’s paled faster than Lucia thought possible, then immediately shifted to a curious, blotchy purple. Deadpool gasped out loud and shouted excitedly, “Hawkeye!”

“Deadpool!” Lucia shouted back, ignoring the faint spluttering sound that was coming from the cashier, “How’s Spiderman going?”

“Spidey’s great,” he grinned through the mask as he gathered up his newest stack of Spiderman comics, “Say hi to Clint for me, if you see him.” He waved goodbye and left the store, shouting over his shoulder as he did so to the still-spluttering cashier, “See you next week!”

Julie gaped after him with undisguised amazement. “Was that…?”

Lucia shrugged, grinning.

Finally, the cashier rediscovered the English language long enough to spit out, “You are not supposed to be here.”

“Why not?” Lucia asked. Beside her, Julie glared at the cashier.

“Because—you just—are you freaking kidding me?” he choked, “You _shot me!”_

Julie snickered. “You _were_ being an asswipe,” she pointed out.

“And _she_ shot me!”the cashier jabbed a finger in Lucia’s direction.

“Aha!” Lucia shouted, “So you admit you were a jerk?”

“I—you—” he shouted, “ _Get out of this store!”_

Lucia just grinned and skipped her way to the comics section, digging through her quiver for the arrow she’d taped her To Buy list to.

“What is her effing problem?” the cashier muttered to no one in particular.

“Do you want it in chronological or alphabetical order?” Julie asked.

The cashier blinked at her, his mouth still hanging open from Lucia’s sudden entrance.

Julie started listing on her fingers, “Belittlement, dishonesty, general rudeness, sexism, superciliousness, unprofessionalism…”

“The fu—?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, were you asking for her problems with you, or her problems in general?” Julie said scathingly. And without further ado, she stomped off after Lucia to help her pick out comics.

For the next ten minutes, the cashier watched them out of the corner of his eye as they meandered throughout the store, keeping careful notice of where Lucia’s hands were in relation to her bow at all times. He didn’t dare try to kick them out again, probably in fear of Lucia shooting him, and any other customers who gave him grief for that got snapped at. Lucia and Julie kept as close an eye on him as he did on them, though they did a better job hiding it.

Finally, the two girls made their way back to the counter, with Lucia hugging a stack of comics to her chest. She plopped them in front of the cashier with a grin, while Julie picked through the button basket. On the surface there didn’t seem to be much reason behind their choice of comics: besides the most recent Avengers issue, there was a motley collection of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor comics, some of them single issues pulled from the middle of storylines. One Batman issue had even snuck its way into the pile, which, according to the internet, held a two panel Avengers cameo hidden in the background of Barbara Gordon’s computer screen. (Lucia only included it because of how amazed she was that Marvel didn’t sue DC, no matter how blurry and indistinct the team was.) But there was one thing they all had in common; either Hawkeye or Black Widow made an appearance in each and every one of them.

The cashier looked at the pile for a few seconds, then gave Lucia a thoroughly unimpressed scowl. “Really?” he said, “You’ve made your point. You _really_ like Black Widow and Hawkeye, and I’m a big meanie-head ‘cause I told you the truth about them.”

Lucia slowly reached for her bow, and Julie’s mouth flew open in preparation for one of her famous verbal smack downs, but the cashier threw his arms up in surrender. “Okay, okay! I get it!” he yelled, “Jesus Christ, whatever happened to freedom of speech?”

“For the love of God!” Julie cried, smacking the back of one hand into the palm of the other to emphasize her point, “If I have to explain this to one more self-entitled white boy I will scream; The Bill of Rights only prohibits the _government_ from infringing on the _individual’s_ right to say what they want. It does _not_ protect the individual from inevitable retaliation from other individuals when that individual abuses their right by being an inconsiderate _ass.”_

The cashier blinked once in shock. Lucia grinned.

“You are twelve years old,” he said, “Shut the hell up.”

Lucia stopped grinning. “Excuse me, I’m thirteen, and she’s fourteen. We are not _twelve!”_

The cashier just sneered (and behind Lucia, Julie cringed a little). “Yeah, whatever, Hawk-Widow.”

“Blackhawk.”

“What?”

“It’s Blackhawk,” Lucia repeated.

A smug grin crept slowly across the cashier’s face. “You wouldn’t know this,” he said, “But—”

“Blackhawk is also a New 52 DC series with no relation to their old character originally created in the forties to lead a team of World War Two pilots by the same name?” Lucia said sweetly, “Yes, I did know that.” She _might_ have looked it up after Adrian mentioned it a few weeks earlier, but the look of utter disorientation on the cashier’s face was worth not mentioning that.

“Aw, did you bruise your superiority complex?” Julie sang, “You poor widdle baby, whatever shall you do?”

“Seriously, what did I do to you?”

“You want go through the list again?” Julie said.

Lucia reached down to open the flap on her ankle holster, and for a moment the cashier paled again, before he realized she stored her money in the pouch instead of a knife.

“That should do it,” she said cheerfully, smacking forty bucks on the counter.

“Sure,” the cashier grumbled as he rang up the items. He took the money and handed her back her change with the comics. While Julie carefully slid them into Lucia’s book bag and pinned the button to her own shirt, Lucia counted out the change.

“You’re missing a cent,” she said.

“Oh for fu—” the cashier opened the cash register again with a _ding_ and _cha-clack,_ pulled out a single penny, and placed it on the counter with jerky, deliberate motions. “Happy now?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said. She plucked the penny up and put it with the rest of her money in her ankle holster. With a glance at Julie, she waved goodbye and skipped out of the store, hand in hand with Julie. (Julie walked.)

“You’re officially banned from coming here ever again!” the cashier yelled after them.

Julie threw up her middle finger over her shoulder and pushed open the door.

* * *

 

“Hey guess what?” Lucia shouted the moment she and Julie got back to her apartment, “We just got kicked out of the comic book store!”

“You guys are so weird,” Adrian said, shaking his head in bewilderment.


End file.
